


Brevifolia

by ambiguously



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-07 07:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Three times Leia Organa kissed Cassian Andor.





	Brevifolia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/gifts).



The first time Leia kisses Cassian Andor, they are on Yavin 4. Father says the base here is growing into a major hub of Rebellion operations. He's brought her with him to learn more about the work their family does to nurture this tiny, resilient group and grow them into a fighting force that can challenge the Empire. At seventeen, Leia already understands that "nurture" is a codeword for "pay for" and "resilient" is code for "not dead yet."

"Smile," Father tells her. "Be warm and appreciative of their sacrifices."

Leia does not roll her eyes, because she's too old for that, but she does thin her mouth into a line. She won't smile on command, not even for her father. There's a reception. Several members of the Council are meeting here. Leia takes note of names, and she acts as pleasant as she's been taught. Occasionally she meets a more familiar face, and manages some talk that isn't so small, but she is aware that she is not yet accepted as an equal among these people. She's not a revolutionary, and she hasn't yet taken over her father's seat in the Senate. Leia is an ornament, a youthful face to put against the enormity of the fight.

It's enough to drive her mad.

While Father is talking to the Senator from Taris, Leia breaks away from a very dull conversation with the representative from Uyter. There aren't enough droids around to have serving mechs, not with every spare unit fitted for a starship, which leaves the food along one wall. She helps herself to several items and finds a place to stand away from the other Alliance bigwigs.

"Bored?" asks a voice at her shoulder.

Leia doesn't jump. She places the bite-sized vegetable into her mouth and chews before answering. "I've been to better parties." She turns. A man has taken up position against the same wall, several discreet centimeters between them. He's grabbed a few bites for himself, wrapping them in a napkin and cradling them out of sight as he eats. Someone who's had to scrounge for his food, she thinks, and has spent time not knowing when or if the next meal is coming, much less if this one will be taken from him. She takes all this in with a glance, taking another bite from her plate.

"It's not a party. They're feeling one another out."

"I know that," she says testily. She's not a little girl. "Are you on the Council?"

He gives her a glance. He's got pretty eyes, a part of her thinks suddenly, warmth in her cheeks. "Do I look like I'm on the Council?"

"You look like a spy who works for the Council." Normally, it would take a glass of sweetwine to loosen her mouth this way, but Leia _is_ bored.

He takes another bite from his precious stash. "Good observation."

"You're Fulcrum. One of them," she amends. "What do you call yourselves? 'Fulcri?'"

This draws out a smile. "'Friend,' usually. But we're rarely in a room together. Not much call for parties for spies."

"That's a shame. I can just picture you all pretending not to know one another and pointedly not looking at one another's faces while the music plays."

"You're right, that's either a party for spies, or an orgy waiting to happen."

Leia holds in her laugh. "Have you been to many orgies?" This is the most interesting conversation she's had all night.

"None in the company of my fellow spies." He takes another bite. He also takes a better look at her face. "You're Organa's daughter."

"Leia. And you are?"

"Going to get into trouble for bringing up orgies with the seventeen year old daughter of the man who paid for my ship." He gives her a friendly nod. "It was nice meeting you, Leia."

She doesn't know his name. She doesn't like this party. She's always had an eye for trouble. As the man goes to walk away, she touches his arm, which makes him turn to face her. Leia pecks a quick kiss on his lips. "Nice to meet you, too."

He coughs uncomfortably, but there's that look in his eyes again as he gives her another friendly nod and leaves. Father is already halfway across the room and coming towards her with a neutral, political, and still highly worried smile.

"Did Captain Andor leave?" he asks, even though the answer is obvious.

Leia is tempted to say something about orgies, but that will get her new friend into trouble. "He had business to attend to. Charming fellow." She puts on a bright smile for her father. She's spent her whole life learning to play parts, and one of those parts has been learning to move her parents into the places she needs them, too. "Why don't you introduce me to more of your contacts?"

Captain Andor, she thinks to herself, and she wonders if that's his given name or a family name, or something else entirely.

* * *

The second time Leia kisses Cassian Andor, part of her is still in shock. They've escaped the base in the Great Temple, and Evaan has cut off their pursuers, and her home and family are gone. Every so often, Leia's thoughts go back to what she's lost. She's been raised to be a leader, to fight for what's right, and to move on even after loss. The Rebels surrounding her have all lost loved ones, families and spouses and the closest of friends. She's one more orphan in a sea of lonely faces, and she is drowning.

The Command team only has a limited use for her expertise. When she's not helping, she's in the way, and Leia hates being in the way even more than she hates being useless.

"I can help here," she says to the medical droid on duty when her restless steps take her to the ship's sickbay. "Let me help. I can put bacta on someone's wound. I can listen."

The droid, perhaps because it has been trained for so long to see even the hidden wounds carried by the organics around it, allows her inside and sets her to work.

There isn't much bacta to place on wounds. The pilots who went up against the Death Star died, except for the few who came back without a scratch. The other wounded have been in treatment longer.

"Talk with them," the droid says. "It might help."

The survivors from Scarif are aboard this ship. She knew about the rescue. She had pictured the hardy band of rogueish heroes returning with a jaunty smile, even as her own ship whisked away the transmitted plans. She didn't picture the blaster wounds, or the floating forms in the bacta tanks restoring what they could of life.

Cassian Andor is in a biobed, his skin still moistened with the last traces of the bacta where he's spent the last several days. He looks asleep, and she hopes he's asleep, not caught in a shellshocked coma.

"Hi," Leia says, sitting next to him. "I didn't expect to see you here."

He doesn't answer.

"I got the briefing after your mission. Your team did well. You got the plans to us, and we found the weakness, just like Erso said. The Death Star is gone, thanks to you and your friends."

Leia wonders what he's seen, how much he had to fight through to get the file out. Not everyone he went to Scarif with made it back alive. He's lost people before, but Leia has the sudden feeling that when he wakes, he's going to be in the same place she is, blinking back memories of the dead.

She takes his still hand. "They destroyed my world. Jedha and Scarif were test fires. The full battery was used to annihilate Alderaan. Everyone I knew is gone." Her hand convulses against his, squeezing it tightly. "And I wanted to say, thank you. Thank you for making sure that won't happen again. For ensuring no one else will feel this way that I do now. You protected them from that, and they don't even know it."

Everything hurts. Leia holds to the hand of this sleeping man as a lifeline out of her despair. They have all suffered to ensure that others will not suffer, and that binds them together.

"I hope you feel better soon," she says. "I'd like to finish our conversation sometime." She leans over and kisses him, leaving the lightest touch of her lips against his. Then, wiping her eyes with her hand, she moves on to the next patient.

As she sits down next to the biobed, she hears behind her in a weak but pleased voice, "You're welcome."

* * *

The third time she kisses him, they're on Hoth. She wasn't expecting Commander Andor's team to be assigned to this base. They tend to stay small and mobile, both very difficult on a planet where the primary drive is not to freeze to death. In fact, it's been months since she last ran into anyone with the small badge on their jacket featuring a type of stunted tree that only grew on the Jedha mesa before its extinction under the first blast of the Death Star. There's a rumor that one of Andor's team, the blind monk who smiles all the time even when he's beating stormtroopers to death with a stick, has a few precious seeds of those trees kept by to plant after the Empire is gone. Leia doesn't believe the rumor, but she's learned the power of a good story to keep hope alive when all seems futile. Other Rebels believe in the trees and thus in the team and in Commander Andor.

"Hi," she says, when she runs into him unexpectedly in a chilly corridor newly-dug from the ice. She's lost the blush, and she knows better than the hero worship.

"Your Highness," he says with a nod. "I didn't know your team was stationed here as well."

She's told him to call her Leia several times. Unlike some people she could name, Cassian says her title as a sign of respect. "I wouldn't have missed it. Frostbite in minutes? Giant ice monsters around every corner? What woman could resist?"

"My thoughts exactly. Why ask for a posting on a sunny planet when we could have freezing death instead?"

He's easy to joke with, a humor only found in the gallows, as her father would have said. Leia prefers the dark sarcasm to the light banter she used to be expected to maintain. It fits inside her mouth better, even if she knows the other words as well.

Her comlink comes to life, reminding her she has somewhere to be. "I'll see you," she says, and moves past him.

She does see him as it turns out. With his team grounded, Commander Andor is in Command with them, poring over intelligence reports, piecing together the briefings from their other bases, and making strategic plans.

He walks her back to her quarters after a planning session. There's something on his mind, and Leia thinks back. At her door she says, "Can you come in for a minute?"

He freezes, not hard to do here, then gives her a nod, following her in. Leia shuts the door behind him. "Rieekan wasn't telling us something." She's always been able to tell when people are keeping secrets, even if she isn't always as talented at sussing them out.

Cassian glances to the door, but it is firmly shut. "Yes."

"Something he can't share with the rest of the Command team?"

He takes a breath. "Are you all right? We haven't chatted in a while." He looks at her. "You don't want to be part of this, Leia."

"I have top clearance, Cassian."

He's got that worried, scared, hunted look. The one from a kid who grew up scavenging food, and a man who survived two blasts from the Death Star. And that's how she knows.

"They're building another one," Leia says, all the air in the room gone. "Another Death Star."

"We got word from a Fulcrum agent this morning." He reaches for her arm. "It's not finished. There's a lot of work yet to be done. Mon Mothma is already working on a plan with her highest advisers. I only know because they needed names from my network." He lets out a short laugh. "There are insurgents among the Bothan slaves building Imperial defense machinery. I recruited them to the cause years ago. They'd like me to ask them to spy for us."

"You're going in instead. Aren't you." Her words are flat.

At last he looks at her, and he sees her. "It was my mission. I have to see it through."

"You're not a Bothan, and your face is on Wanted posters across the galaxy. You can't go in. You're too famous."

"Then who do I ask?" His hood is pulled down, and he rubs his hair. "Do I send in some poor Bothan to steal secrets from the Empire, ask him to die for the hope we might find some flaw in the design and stop them before more people are killed?"

He's panicked. She's ready to follow. A Death Star. And this time, their hopes in finding out its weaknesses rest with people they have failed to free.

"If you have to. If that's the price. Let him fight for freedom, too."

"While I stay here?"

"No. While we work here to ready our troops for the assault we'll have to make once we get the intel. You're not only a spy any longer, Cassian. You're a soldier and a military leader, and we need you."

"We are going to die," he tells her. "Even with the intelligence, even with an attack, I don't see myself surviving a third encounter with a Death Star, and I am terrified of what seeing another one will do to you." He knows what the first one cost her, and what she endured there. His pain is for her now.

"You don't have to worry about me," she says, but they're alone, and his eyes say more. She's wanted to say more for a long time. She takes his hands. They're freezing, of course, but she's warm now. "You survive for me, and I'll be brave for you. Do we have a deal?"

"It's not that simple."

She kisses him. It's not the friendly peck from when she was a girl. It's not the gentle thanks from when she found him recovering after the battle. This is all her pent-up feelings, and pieces of herself she lost, and her comfort in knowing he understands her. Her childhood and innocence are as lost as her planet, but she holds the seeds of her hopes and carries them with her, and he does, too. After a moment, he kisses her back.

"Leia, I should...."

"Stay. You should stay here tonight," she says, and kisses him again, and she stops counting the kisses as he melts into her at long last.


End file.
